This isn't a tutorial on how to make pivot tables or economic regressions, or how to balance your company's finances. Instead, here are the new features that the reworked charts in PowerPoint have to offer, including some tips and tricks that will enable you to do your job more efficiently.

Brand new to Office 2007 is the new version of Charts to replace the old Microsoft Graph Chart and the Microsoft Excel Graph—both of which were inserted as OLE objects in previous versions of Office. While you can still insert these OLE objects, you will be hard-pressed to find an opportunity to do so, given that the renovated charts in Office 2007 look amazing and function much better.

NOTE

OLE stands for object linking and embedding, a technology prevalent within Office to run one program inside another program. Microsoft Graph, the predecessor to Office 2007 Charts, used OLE. So, although graphs were technically part of PowerPoint, graph editing was actually done inside an entirely different program with menus and commands that are completely distinct from PowerPoint's. Office 2007 Charts do not use OLE and are just another feature that is seamlessly part of PowerPoint.

This isn't a tutorial on how to make pivot tables or economic regressions, or how to balance your company's finances. Instead, let us walk you through the new features that the reworked charts have to offer, and hopefully some of the tips and tricks we show you will enable you to do your job more efficiently.

Inserting Excel Charts into PowerPoint

There are a couple of important ways to get a chart into your presentation: You could use the commands found on the Ribbon to insert a generic chart with some default data, or you could copy and paste an existing chart from an Excel spreadsheet that contains the data you need.

Because charts are a graphical representation of data, and this data is usually in the form of tables or grids that you can find in Microsoft Excel, we're going to walk through copying and pasting charts from Excel first. Following that, we go into how to create a chart from scratch in PowerPoint.

Copying and Pasting

Charts are primarily a native Excel object. The data represented by the chart is contained within cells in a spreadsheet, but when you need to create a presentation, the best way to get a chart into PowerPoint from Excel is to copy and paste it.

Aside from the Copy and Paste buttons in the Clipboard group on the Home tab, you can use shortcut keys Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste, respectively. The default format in which the chart gets pasted is the Microsoft Office Graphic Object, which creates a native chart on the PowerPoint slide.

TIP

Charts can be pasted as other types, such as an OLE object or as a picture. Use Paste Special to see other formats, or use Ctrl+Alt+V as a shortcut.

After your chart is pasted, the Paste Options button appears in the lower right side of the chart (see Figure 6.1).

The following options are available after pasting a chart from Excel into PowerPoint:

Chart (Linked to Excel Data)—The chart updates when the data is changed in Excel.

Excel Chart (Entire Workbook)—The data is copied over to PowerPoint.

Paste as Picture—An image of the chart is copied but cannot be changed further.

The following options relate to the presentation's theme and how the chart looks after it is pasted:

Keep Source Formatting

Use Destination Theme

By default, Chart (linked to Excel data) and Use Destination Theme are selected. In general, you want to leave your chart linked to Excel data in case the data in your Excel spreadsheet changes and you want the chart to update to reflect the changes. If you choose an option other than this, the chart does not change when the data in the cells change.

CAUTION

Keeping the Excel data inside your chart can have implications if you share the presentation with others because it can contain formulas or calculations that you might not want everyone to have access to. If this is a concern, choose the Paste as Picture option instead.

Inserting an Excel Chart from Within PowerPoint

To insert an Excel chart from scratch in PowerPoint, do the following: